No, No, No, No

DOONESBURY

This strip, from October 6, seems to be going viral. Click the link to see it (and pass it on), but basically you’ve got a middle aged white guy on the radio . . .

Hey, folks who look like me! Negative Ned here for the state of North Carolina! Here in Raleigh, we’re on the move — backwards! 338 regressive bills and counting! We’ve said No to young people by banning pre-registration! They’re just not mature enough to vote the right way. And No to teachers . . .

No, also — if you read on, from panel to panel — to the unemployed . . . to women . . . to minorities . . . to college students . . . to law enforcement . . . to scientists (“If you use climate change data in your projections you will be punished! It’s the law!”)

THE G. “NO” P.

This is a party committed to blocking the uninsured from getting affordable health care, especially if they have preexisting conditions.

Committed to cutting back on food stamps for the poor in tough economic times.

Committed to keeping them poor by preventing a rise in the minimum wage.

(Watch Rachel debunk the myth that raising the minimum wage raises unemployment. Watch her show how popular minimum wage hikes are . . . even among Republicans . . . except those in Congress. Read Nick Hanauer’s case for a $15 minimum wage. And, if you are my last reader on earth not to have seen it, watch his 5:50 minute Ted Talk. Lifting people into the middle class by paying them decently — not tax cuts for the best off — is what creates jobs.)

It’s a party committed to neutering financial reform. To opposing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. To making abortion unavailable to the poor. To blocking the American Jobs Act that would have put the unemployed to work rebuilding America’s infrastructure. To making it harder to vote. To blocking Senate-passed immigration reform that would pass the House if it were brought up for a vote — and the Senate-passed Employment Nondiscrimination Act that would pass the House if it were brought up for a vote. To blocking marriage equality. To decrying compromise. To breaking the unions. To denying climate change. To killing ACORN.

HEALTH CARE

Peter Kronenberg: “Here’s a site that calculates the subsidy a family would be eligible for.”

THE POPE

According to the New York Times yesterday, bishops are getting his Holy drift.

. . . They voted a day after hearing an address by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the Vatican’s ambassador, or nuncio, to the United States, who spoke of Francis’ vision for the church.

Archbishop Blase J. Cupich of Spokane, Wash., said in an interview after the vote on Tuesday: “The nuncio said the Holy Father wants bishops to have a keen pastoral sensitivity, shepherds who know the smell of the sheep. That’s a nice metaphor to use.

“Pope Francis doesn’t want cultural warriors, he doesn’t want ideologues,” he said. “That’s the new paradigm for us, and it’s making many of us think.”

Quote of the Day

It was only 80 years from the time Darwin published ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES until we detonated the first nuclear bomb. In the lifetime of one person, we went from figuring out where we came from to figuring out how to get rid of ourselves.

~Paleontologist Jack Horner

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